


boston.

by orphan_account



Series: honey baby, can't you tell? [1]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Running Away, Temporary Homelessness, being in love and on the run
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:53:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23526451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: After the shed, Alex and Michael take off.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Series: honey baby, can't you tell? [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1693024
Comments: 22
Kudos: 162





	boston.

“Where do we go?” Michael’s eyes dart across the road, scanning for something. Errant deer, a guided missile, a fucking UFO… Alex can’t tell.

He knocks his skull against the passenger window, his head rocking against the glass as they speed down the bumpy, winding road. “I don’t know,” Alex says, closing his eyes on the broken white lines, headlight-illuminated shrubs, the distant blue-black mountains that circle their shitty little city. “As far as we can get.”

-

They make it as far as Santa Rosa before Michael needs a piss and Alex needs caffeine. And a giant fucking burrito. They sit with legs dangling over the bed of Michael’s truck, passing red sauce back and forth, while Alex chugs another couple migraine pills with his red bull. 

“Head okay?” Michael asks. His shirt is acting as one big bib. Alex has seen dogs with better table manners--not that they’re exactly dining with the good silver.

Alex swallows the rush of rage that threatens to overwhelm him. Michael’s hand is still wrapped in so much gauze he might as well be wearing an oven mitt. His bump on the head hardly feels worth any notice.

“All good.”

“Hey.” Alex can feel Michael’s stare, a sharp heat prickling his cheek, the whole right side of his body. He takes a breath, inclining his head slightly. Michael reaches out, tracing the outside corner of Alex’s black eye, the deep purple bruises from his temple to the edge of his frown. Alex wants to flinch--not because it hurts, but because Michael’s touch is so devastatingly tender Alex is five seconds away from shattering under his gaze, his gentleness. He turns away. 

They watch the convenience store sign flicker for a couple minutes. Then Michael says, “Are you gonna finish that, or…?” And Alex can’t help his huff of laughter. 

“Jesus, Guerin. You’re a bottomless pit, you know that?” He hands over his last half of burrito, focusing his grin at the red bull can. 

-

They almost make it past the border of New Mexico before stopping again. Michael pulls off a dirt road carrying them through Nara Visa into an empty lot across from a tiny, angled white church. Alex stirs from his twilight sleep, rubbing at his mouth as the engine cuts, and glances around through the windows. 

“Why’re we stopping?” 

“Just need a minute.” Michael jumps out of the cab and walks in front of the truck, carrying on for a good twenty feet. Besides the church, there is a good stretch of absolutely nothing in every direction you look. Alex gets the shiver of a ghost town creeping across his spine, that feeling of being far removed from people and yet certain you’re being watched. They’re almost out of the state, his state, the only one he’s ever lived in. The only place he’s ever really known. The desert surrounding him now isn’t Roswell, but it’s still home. It’s still familiar enough he’s sure he could track himself back home by the sand on the ground, navigate by the stars at night. He went to Florida for the summer when he was seven, before his mom split, when they all got to go to Disney World as a family. It was the last family vacation, and it ended shitty like all the rest ever did, but before that he got sick on hotdogs and giant lemon icees with his brothers, and they all laughed and helped clean him up and his dad let him ride around on his shoulders so he could see over all the crowds, so he could feel like a giant. The feeling in the pit of his stomach now--it’s the first time he curled his toes over the high dive. It’s when he grabbed Flint’s hand as the rollercoaster crested, and Flint squeezed tight, told him to open his eyes, it was okay. It’s the sick drop that first time he watched his mom cry. 

He steps out of the truck, afternoon heat greeting him like a brick wall. 

Alex walks up beside Michael, watching the dust and the invisible border between known and unknown. 

“You wanna go back?” he asks, keeping his voice soft, ready for the gut punch. Ready to wake up from the dream. 

“Fuck no.” Michael whips around at him, eyes sharp as his tongue. He reaches out at once, twisting their fingers together. It’s a reckless, stupid thing to do. Alex wants to embrace it, wants to test it further, wants to see just how far the universe will let them push. “I just… I just needed a minute. That’s all.”

“Okay,” says Alex, clearing his throat roughly. He blinks the dust from his eyes, that’s all. And they stare out at the kiss of clean, blue sky to dark desert ground, until Michael squeezes his hand, _lets go_ , strolls back to the truck. Alex takes a moment to inhale all that blue and let it wash out everything inside him, leaving it there in the dirt lot, across from the lovely wooden cross and the rusted tractor. 

-

They’re sitting knee-to-knee on the queen sized mattress, in a $40 a night motel room, a splurge they can’t really afford. They don’t speak. Alex feels a responsibility he didn’t ask for, doesn’t want, settle around them. He supposes it’s fair; he grabbed Michael’s hand, he told him to drive, he pushed them forward. But now that the adrenaline has worn off, now that reality creeps in, it all feels a little too raw, too much pressure on a fresh wound. He doesn’t want to be in charge of this road trip; a surly, childish part of him wants someone, anyone, to tell him what the fuck he’s supposed to do next. The angriest, most terrified part of his brain keeps imaging the door to their motel room slamming open, his dad storming in and dragging them out by the hair. He thinks it would, almost, be some kind of awful relief. At least, if the choice is taken from him, he can’t fuck it all up. 

But then he looks at Michael. Side-long, carefully. And Michael’s staring at him already, eyes huge, mouth parted and tipped into a soft, generous smile. Michael rests a hand on Alex’s knee, squeezing just so. And in that moment, Alex isn’t afraid. Not of his father or the future or of failure--not of anything. For Michael, Alex thinks, he can be brave. For Michael, he can at least pretend. 

He opens his mouth to lick at his lips, says, “So I was thinking. Boston.”

“Um,” Michael laughs, the kind of sound that’s punched out of your chest. “Yeah, sure. Then we could hit up New York. Pop over to Paris, too.”

Alex levels his best unimpressed look. “No, I mean it. You’ve already got the scholarship to MIT. I bet I can find financial aid, for my tuition. I get a job, work nights and weekends--and I’m sure any garage would take you on part time. We get an apartment, you become the next Steve Jobs or whatever. I don’t know, we make it work.” 

“Make it work? Sure, if we could get there. I don’t know if you noticed, but after tonight we’ll have exactly eighty-eight dollars to our name. I don’t think that’ll get Gertie there on gas alone so…” 

Alex has thought of this, already. Alex has thought a lot, about all of this. He wants to say it all out loud: how they’re standing on the precipice of something that could slide backwards into the familiar, or catapult them into the unknown. How it’s scary and dangerous and exciting. How much he wants, more than anything, to just be with Michael, no matter where they are or how they get there. 

He reaches down by his ankle, into his book-bag, and pulls out a stack of neatly bundled cash. 

Michael’s eyes bug out. “Um… what the fuck, man. Are you secretly a drug dealer or what?” He’s laughing again, in disbelief, as Alex hands over the money for Michael to fondle and rub, as if it might disappear. 

“My mom, she uh… before she left, she gave me this old necklace. Said her mom gave it to her, you know, family heirloom type deal. Obviously she wanted to give it to her daughter, but she said I could just give it to my, uh,” he can’t help his wry smirk, “my wife one day. But, y’know, that ship’s kinda sailed so… Turns out the stones were real in it.”

Michael’s forgotten the money in his hands, eyes laser focused on Alex.

“So,” Alex clears his throat roughly. “We could make it to Boston, if we’re careful. I mean, if that’s… if you want. We obviously don’t have to.” He doesn’t want to act too defensive, but it feels as though he’s exposing his wet, beating heart, offering it up on a silver plate for Michael to judge. And he might be sweating, a little, from the way Michael is staring at him.

One second Alex feels an unwanted, embarrassing frustration rising in his chest, half a second away from yelling at Michael to just fucking say something already--and in the next Michael’s broad hands are cupping his face, pulling him in. Their mouths meet like the ending to a good story, just right, just as expected. Just what he wants. He twists his hands helplessly into Michael’s hair, pulling back to breathe and grin against Michael’s mouth. 

“Yes,” says Michael, immediately moving in for another sloppy, happy kiss. “Yes, yes, obviously yes. I can’t believe we’re actually doing this, that we… that we’re really gonna pull it off.”

Alex laughs, maybe a touch hysterically. He can’t believe his life at this moment, either. Michael kisses him, again and again. They throw the cheap quilt to the floor and do all sorts of things nobody wants to know has been done to the bed they’re renting.

-

Michael buys maps from the gas station the next morning (in addition to red bulls, a bag of powdered donut bites, and a tiny gold and red key chain with NEW MEXICO sparkling across its lacquered surface). Despite Alex rolling his eyes, because hello, the internet, there’s something unspeakably nice about watching Michael spread out every single map, brow furrowed like how he gets reading his way too advanced physics books from the library, calculating their total gas mileage, the cheapest routes with the least tolls, scheduling driving shifts for the both of them. 

Give or take, they’ve got about 2,000 miles to cover. They could do it in 30 hours, but Michael gives them some leeway with stops and decides they should get a motel in Ohio, even though Alex thinks it’s a waste. They fight about that for a couple hours, while Alex sweats in the corner of their room and Michael works, pens scratching the maps. Until Michael flops in front of Alex with his best shit eating grin. 

“Look, we can hit up the Nuclear Waste Adventure Trail on our way through St. Louis.”

“I hate you,” Alex laughs, the tension melting like ice in his hand. Michael teases a kiss out of him. Suddenly another motel room seems perfectly reasonable. 

-

The hours roll by, revealing the country Alex has lived in his whole life but rarely seen. Thick with green woods, pale with seemingly endless desert, and gleaming with pavement, glittering silver and glass up in the clouds. They drive in six hour shifts, finding rest stops to stretch, letting each other sleep with the radio on low, or turned off completely when they hit a long stretch of deserted highway and the signal fuzzes to static. Alex will swap in some of his Panic! CDs or hook in Michael’s iPod, with his eclectic playlists, when he can’t decide on a station. They talk. They talk a lot. Alex learns things he never thought to ask, finds himself sharing more than he thought possible. There’s something about driving, about not looking at one another, focusing forward on a common goal, that makes it easier to lean into honesty, makes confession feel safer, somehow. Michael’s bad at sharing snacks and fidgets constantly when he’s trying to sleep. He also sings along to all the George Strait songs Alex doesn’t recognize. And he kisses Alex, sometimes, in the middle of a gas station convenience, when they’re scoping the aisles for the cheapest snacks. He does a triple take of their surroundings and just ducks his head, swooping in to kiss Alex’s neck, jaw, mouth. Raises his brows at the security cameras with a grin that invites danger. Alex doesn’t know how to handle the helpless, swelling affection that spreads to his fingers, his toes. 

They’re half-way through the trip. Alex wonders if maybe they should slow down a little, enjoy the sights and places they’re speeding past, but their purpose is not an actual road trip. It’s the destination, not the journey, in this case. It’s the future they’re moving towards. He tries to explain this to Michael, when he detours them to the largest lake in Illinois. He only gets away with it because Alex doesn’t wake up until they’re cruising past it, arcing slowing around it’s massive, still blue face. 

“This is, technically, kidnapping.” Alex wants to be more upset than he is, for Michael deviating from the plan. 

“You should be nicer to me then, if you’re my hostage.”

Alex flattens his mouth and raises a brow. Michael laughs, and they find an edge of the beach that is mostly unoccupied. 

They walk to the shore barefoot. Alex breathes in that unmistakable lake-smell, and the woodsy scent from the flora all around them. He’s never been in a place like this--so deeply, almost unnervingly alive. The water is so richly blue it could be breathing, just as alive as the towering trees behind them. 

When Alex glances beside him, Michael is studying him. He looks good, under the afternoon’s harsh glare, light refracting off the lake’s surface and highlighting his every freckle and concern. He looks ready to say something achingly real, so Alex acts first, tackling him in an instant. They go down in the sand, wind knocked out of both of them for a moment, before Michael fights through his shock and laughter, to wrestle Alex properly. They splash into the water, which is bracingly cool, cutting out the legs from one another in turn. They tumble and spill deeper down the lake, fully dressed, laughing so hard they can’t breathe, water in their lungs, sun settling in their bones. Their play fighting is light, teasing, careful. They knock each other on their ass a good few times, but with a gentle, steadying hand reaching out to pull one another back up. In minutes they devolve into close shoving, grasping, more pull than push. Waist deep and soaking wet Alex does the reckless, stupid thing and kisses Michael. 

Michael pulls away after a moment, searching Alex’s face for something. Alex doesn’t know what to show, what to give in that moment. He holds Michael’s hand under the waves, breathless. 

Michael grins, inscrutable, and drags Alex ashore. They strip to boxers and stretch out in the sand, letting their clothes dry on an outcrop of rocks. They talk about home, old teachers in Roswell Elementary, how dumb Kyle Valenti is, what they think Boston will be like, what they want to do with their degrees. They give each other wild, imaginative lives. Astronauts and presidents and spies. And then, for a while, they just lie there. Two long bodies mirroring each other, fingers interlaced behind the back of their necks, elbows touching, letting their wet skin bake in the sand, listening to the lazy song of the lake and far away boats of people having a good time. 

On their way out, they hit a little shop by the shore. They buy ice cold sodas--brand name, good shit--and they drink them watching the sun sparkle on the infinite blue, standing so close Alex can feel the warm sun on Michael’s skin radiate against his. They drink too fast, burp too loud, and make a disgusting scene. Two teenage boys causing trouble. Alex can’t remember when life felt so simple.

Michael purchases a soft blue tank top, with the lake’s name and a little boat blazing across the chest. He balls it up and arcs it to Alex, who catches on instinct, as they leave the shop. He doesn’t say a thing, and Alex thinks of their little key chain, and the all the dumb pictures they’ve taken (together, of the scenery, of Alex when he’s sleeping and Michael voices over a short video as if in a wildlife documentary)--all the sand still stuck to his skin and the sunburn biting the tops of Michael’s shoulders. All the little things they’ve collected along their way. 

Alex strips off his damp shirt, right there in the parking lot. He wrestles on the tank and slings his shirt over his shoulder. He glances down at the logo, touching the light cotton with his fingers, then back at Michael. Michael’s face is doing a lot. His eyes are intense, his mouth twisting, head tilted. Alex feels completely trapped by the gravity of Michael’s gaze. He wants--he feels--it’s electric and magnetic. Alex feels the draw as strongly as bodies in space are drawn to a star. They are pulled to each other, and Alex knows what Michael wants, in that moment, what he wants to do more than anything. It thrums in Alex’s pulse.

But. But--they’re in Illinois and there are people everywhere, families with towels and coolers and strollers ambling toward the beach and fishermen with poles resting against their shoulder as they walk towards the bait shop They were lucky to find a secluded spot, before, they’ve been lucky with every stolen kiss or brush of hands. And yeah, probably, probably they’d be fine. But they’re not home. They don’t know anyone but each other for a thousand miles. And as much as Michael makes Alex feel reckless, brave--he wouldn’t ever even try to put Michael in real danger. And Alex watches Michael cycle through the same emotions. Alex closes his hand to a fist, tangles the other in the end of his shirt. Michael grins, throws an arm around Alex’s shoulder, and drags him to the car, laughing and pulling him with hot, strong hands, puffing his breath on Alex’s cheek. He opens the passenger door gallantly, swooping his arm like a gentleman. Alex rolls his eyes, but climbs in. 

When the doors are shut, Michael grabs Alex’s hand and sets it on the gearshift, interlacing his fingers over Alex’s. His cheeks burn, but Alex allows it. 

All in all they waste about four hours on this little pit stop. But as they careen back onto the interstate--Alex’s hair still heavy from the salt and muck of the lake, his fingertips still pruney, Michael’s curls glowing still from residual sun--it doesn’t feel much like a waste at all. Maybe, just a little bit, it’s about the journey, too.

-

In Ohio, at a motel even shittier than the first one, they kiss each other desperately in the dark. Everything comes alive between them, all the hesitations in public, all the glances, all those sparks suspended between them--it all ignites. And after, like kindling, Alex holds this warmth between them in his chest.

-

Rolling into Boston is every fear and excitement at once. It’s not as momentous as Alex built it up to be--maybe a part of his brain expecting a big banner and confetti, _you did it!!!_ Instead it’s more traffic and a cold, smoggy sky. Still, something comes loose in his chest after they pass the big white _Entering Boston_ sign. As they crawl around the city, everything feels within his grasp. The life he wants, the future he craves. It’s no longer a thing they’re driving towards--it’s a place they’re in. It’s tangible, in the cigarette smoke and asphalt of the streets. 

It’s three in the morning when they pull into the city. Alex wakes Michael up with a smack to the chest. He scrabbles awake, instantly grinning, fogging up the window with his face pressed against it. Alex just drives, for a while. They soak in the city as it slumbers, for the most part. Cruising down the streets like kids at Disneyland, hitting one another’s arms each time they notice a new attraction, twinkling in the distance. 

Alex takes them down a street parallel to MIT. They cut the lights across from the school’s massive dome, rings of columns supporting the arcing roof. Alex has certainly never seen such architecture so close in his life, and he can bet Michael hasn’t either. They hold their breath together, for a moment. Staring into the dark, the rich grass being fed by timed sprinklers, security lights brightening certain corners, the sheer magnitude of the campus looming in front of them--it’s less overwhelming, more encompassing. Like they’re already apart of all the shine and glory of the institution, not spectators on the street. 

Michael leans over to kiss Alex’s neck, again and again, until Alex is laughing, shoving him away. Michael’s eyes gleam in the cab of his truck. 

“Alex,” he says, voice low, catching on some emotion. Alex holds his breath again. “Um… thank you. Just--thank you. I wouldn’t’ve ever gotten here, if it weren’t for you. Hell, I don’t think I would’ve ever gotten out of _Roswell_.”

Alex can’t begin to unpack that. He touches the sides of Michael’s face delicately, only brushing his fingertips, and kisses him as sweet as he knows how. 

“You hungry?” Alex asks, as they pull apart.

Michael’s slings on a grin. “Always.”

They drift around a couple streets before finding a restaurant with its lights still on and jam themselves into a booth. Michael buys a newspaper at the front and they both order hot, black coffees while scanning the menu. It’s a tiny, 24/7 taco shop that does a little of everything. Alex gets an order of breakfast tacos and Michael orders two cheesy, beef and potato filled burritos. 

Alex feels too seen by their waitress, a middle aged woman with a steel-gray bun and hard-working hands that snatch their menus with practiced efficiency. She eyes Alex especially, and Alex feels a total fraud under her gaze. Something about her air of brutal pragmatism has that old, tender ache for his mother flare up. Just a kid caught sneaking around, doing something wrong. He’s not, technically, not really, but still. He waits for the cops to come and drag him back home, kicking and screaming, because he’s too young and dumb to choose what he wants for himself. 

Only the coffee comes, however. Michael stirs sugars in his, gulping quickly as he circles apartment listings. Alex listens to the sounds of the fryer, fast Spanish spilling from the radio in the kitchen, the cash register clicking. 

Michael kicks his feet under the table. “Hey.” 

“What?”

“You good?”

Alex opens his mouth. Their waitress sets the food on the table in front of them, sets a hand on her hip and flashes a somewhat stressed out smile. 

“Anything else for you boys?”

“Yeah,” says Alex, before he can think. “Are you hiring?”

She eyes him, again, and another ghostly shiver shoots up his spine. He imagines what she sees: a rumpled teenaged dirtbag, smeared eyeliner and nose piercing. She says, “You good with people?”

“Yes ma’am.” He nods, turning on his friendliest smile, the one that all the teachers found endearing, even when he was being a total shit. 

“Hard worker?”

Alex nods again. “Yes ma’am.”

Her mouth softens. “Well, we’re not hiring here. But my other job is the grocers, down on Bishop Allen. You could apply there, we always need more stock-boys.”

Alex nods gratefully, glancing toward her name tag quickly. “Thank you, Anna. I really appreciate it.”

“You let me know if there’s anything else,” she says, with a smile, and leaves them. 

Michael’s smirk is only a step above malicious delight. 

“Don’t,” starts Alex.

“You sly fucking dog. That was hot, why didn’t I know you could be this polite and hot?”

“Shut up,” Alex drops his face in his hands, not even hungry anymore. 

Michael manages to cackle around a huge bite of burrito, although not without being disgusting. “Okay, sure, two seconds in the big city, already got a fucking job. _Ma'am_. What an upstanding young gentleman you are.”

“Oh my god.” Alex kicks at him under the table, but Michael just traps his foot with both of his, making Alex blush harder. 

“I mean it, take charge Alex is hot as hell.”

“You’ve gotta stop saying that,” Alex mumbles into his palms. 

Michael laughs again, dropping his foot, but keeping their legs close enough to brush against each other. He steals a piece of bacon off of Alex’s taco, grinning in the maddeningly cute way he has, his eyes dark and suggestive of all sorts of unsavory thoughts. Alex smothers his laughter, smiling hard from a mixture of sleepless delirium and bone-melting relief. For the first time in a long time, Alex thinks everything might just be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> i will forever and always adore the version of malex that left together and every path that creates for them. also runaway roadtrips are my kryptonite !  
> [tumblr](http://katsofmeer.tumblr.com/)


End file.
